It's time to catch up!

It is said that time flies when you're having fun.

And so it is on Route 66. Some of our days have been long, and I've had magazine proofing to do, so the blog has had to be set aside. But tonight we're in a St. Louis suburb, and I've got some time. Here's a day-by-day recap of our exceptional experiences, and I hope to be all caught up tomorrow.

Monday, Sept. 20, Buffalo, Wyo., to Keystone, S.D. -- This is the land of pink highways! Really! The I-90 roadbed is actually pink because native pink-colored stone, which you can see along the road, was used to surface the highway.

And Wyoming has amazing geography, with flat plains punctuated by pyramid-shaped mounds that resemble those you'd see in Egypt; others look like the top of the pyramid was sliced off with a knife to create a butte.

As much as we felt compelled to start building mountains of mud a la Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," we eschewed a side trip to Devil's Tower because it would add another 50 miles to our already-long day. Passing Gillette, which suffers aesthetically, we saw an ingenious way of generating power -- a landscape-scouring coal mine on the left and the power plant on the right. In between was a conveyor that ran from the mine under the highway and directly to the plant.

Our morning rest stop at Moorcraft brought us to an oasis of trees in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Not surprisingly, we learned that it was a former stagecoach stop where, of course, horses and people were well-watered. And as we move along the highway, we see long rust-red buttes, ridges of reddish stone and, sadly, road kill -- deer, sheep, raccoon. After driving through the flat, yellow plains, we came over a ridge and voila! Trees! We had just entered into the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Deadwood, S.D. -- what grand architecture of brick buildings built in the 1870s -- to us it was reminiscent of the beautiful facades of Port Townsend, Wash. But taking a closer look, Deadwood is pretty much dead unless you're into slots and smoke-filled gaming rooms. There are empty storefronts, plastic-clad windows, cheezy souvenir shops, and in spite of the sunshine and blue skies, the town is a sorry tourist trap. There are two wooden signs that indicate important events for Wild Bill Hickock -- one shows us where he was shot (in front of a now-abandoned casino/it was a saloon in his day) and the other is where the shooter was captured; we had trouble reading this last sign because T-shirts from the shop that occupies the space flapped in the breeze and obscured the lettering.

What's so amazing about this route is that we're seeing flat, flat, flat -- and yet our elevation is more than a mile! We're traveling straight as a ruler -- no mountain passes -- and we're at 5,450 feet above sea level.

We arrived in Keystone in the afternoon, and after getting situated, departed for nearby Hart Ranch to meet Duane and Nancy's friends, Ron and Marla Sande (Duane and Ron went to high school together), who hosted us with wine and beer and some lovely and filling appetizers. Their friends Bart and Diane were visiting from Minnesota, and we had a great time meeting and talking with everyone. And then there was Tess, their wonderful dog who would have nothing but to find someone to throw a frisbee toy for the catching. Our heartiest thanks to the Sandes for having us to their lovely home.

We beat feet back to Keystone, grabbed jackets and headed for the night program at Mount Rushmore. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but knew we would see lights of some kind shine on the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln. But how lucky were we -- with a full moon, the sculptures were already illuminated while we watched a very moving video about what these four great Americans contributed to our government. At the end, the Park Service narrator asked all men and women in the military to come down to the stage to participate in the lowering and folding of the American flag. There must have been more than 100 retired and active-duty soldiers there, including three of our party. We sang the national anthem, clapped continuously for the military representatives, and sniffed our way through the ceremony. It was such an extraordinary experience, and it made me so proud to be an American. One wonders what it would be like to be able to call on those four great minds today to help solve some of our country's problems.

Tuesday, Sept. 21, Keystone, S.D., to Sioux Falls, S.D. -- But we weren't done with Mount Rushmore yet. This morning we dashed back up the mountain to see the faces in sunlight. It was remarkable as the clouds played a light show on them; we went to one particular viewpoint where only Washington's face is visible in profile. Luckily our fellow 66er Les, who portrays George Washington several weeks a year in Colonial Williamsburg, was there, and after he stopped laughing, he obliged us with the chance to shoot his profile -- stone George above and live Les below. Remarkable!!

Today was a day to cover distance with nearly 370 miles to Sioux Falls. That's not a huge number of miles, but remember, we're traveling at 60 mph while the speed limit is 75 mph. We just don't want to push these babies too hard. After all, they were built when going 50 mph was a pretty fast pace.

We've left the Black Hills, and we're still on a high-plains plateau, but today we're only at about 3,000 feet above sea level. During the drive Les had a tire problem; he thinks he lost one of the wheel weights used to balance the right front tire. He went on ahead to the next town and had the tires rebalanced, meeting us later in the afternoon at a rest stop.

The song "You've got your dead skunk in the middle of the road . . . and it's stinking to high heaven" has been on our minds as we've sniffed our way across I-90. But today we actually saw the source of the stink -- We had our dead skunk on the side of the road, and . . . well, you know the rest!

In the interests of making good time, we decided to put off lunch until well after noon. But we didn't know that on the way to the next rest stop, we'd move into Central Time, losing an hour. When Nancy found out, she radioed us all that now, knowing it was really after 1 o'clock, we was REALLY hungry.

Driving the straight-as-a-board I-90 has been an interesting lesson in aerodynamics. We're all keeping close tabs on our gas consumption (although prices went down as we moved east), so compute the miles-per-gallon figures often. We've really paid attention to winds especially and how it affects our mileage. We've had head winds (15 mpg), crosswinds (17 mpg) and tail winds (20 mpg); we've also found that, of course, our mileage is much better on the flat, no matter what the wind is doing.

Other sights: Water towers that look like golf balls balanced on a giant golf tee, herds of Black Angus cattle, withering corn stalks mile after mile. And then, we came over a rise and suddenly we saw green -- lots of green -- and felt a new humidity to the air!

We passed the South Dakota Tractor Museum, but oh Deere, we had to miss it.